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Duality and nonduality are two sides of the same coin.

Illusion. This is one of those words which are being thrown around in spiritual circles like they're confetti, and yet very few people seem to understand what the word actually refers to. So, let's analyze the confetti so that we can see it for what it really is(n't). Here's what an illusion is NOT: It's not something that isn't real. It's not something that doesn't exist. It's not a hallucination that is being "dreamed up" by some mysterious invisible being. Here's what an illusion IS: It is an incomplete perception (which is a tautology, since all perception is necessarily incomplete). It is a relative perspective (as opposed to absolute truth). It is a part of reality (as opposed to ALL of reality). Here's an analogy: When we see a magician standing on a stage and performing a magic trick, why do we call that magic trick an illusion? Is it because there is no magician, no white rabbit and no hat that the rabbit is being pulled out of? NOPE. We call it an illusion because we are only seeing part of what is actually happening; we see a real magician pulling a real rabbit out of a real hat, but what we don't see is all of the stuff that is going on behind the scenes - all of the things that have been carefully hidden from our view so that we can be amazed and surprised by the things that we do see happening on stage; and since we are missing the full picture, it appears to us like magic. Does this mean that the illusion is "bad"? No, it doesn't. Not only is the existence of illusions not bad, but in fact it is a necessary condition for reality being able to experience/be aware of itself, since reality can only ever be partially perceived and experienced, but never as a 100% complete whole. No illusions = no experience of reality. Here are examples of things that are illusions: The black letters appearing on a white screen that you are seeing now are an illusion. The thought "those black letters appearing on a white screen are just an illusion" is an illusion. The notion that there is something rather than nothing is an illusion. The notion that there is nothing rather than something is an illusion. The notion that reality is physical is an illusion. The notion that reality is a dream is an illusion. The notion that you are human is an illusion. The notion that you are not human is an illusion. The notion that you are consciousness is an illusion. The notion that you are not consciousness is an illusion. Duality is an illusion. Nonduality is an illusion. Oneness is an illusion. Multiplicity is an illusion. Solipsism is an illusion. Time is an illusion. Timelessness is an illusion. Form is an illusion. Formlessness is an illusion. Free will is an illusion. No free will is an illusion. Meaning is an illusion. Meaninglessness is an illusion. Self is an illusion. No-self is an illusion. Anything that can be perceived, experienced and be expressed with words is an illusion. Again: An illusion is NOT something that doesn't exist. An illusion is a part of reality that "stands out" (in your awareness) from the rest of reality. So not only do illusions exist, but as a matter of fact, ILLUSIONS ARE THE ONLY THING(S) THAT EXIST. That which does not exist - which doesn't "stand out" - is the Absolute, which is no-thing aka. everything. --- All of what you just read is an illusion (-> a relative perspective). And all of what you are going to reply will also be an illusion. Now, are you going to cling to one illusion and reject the other, or are you going to be aware of that which holds, encompasses, expresses itself as and transcends all illusions? Your choice.

A nonduality teacher can never teach another person what’s being spoken. They’ll have nothing to give you. There’s no teacher, only speaking, only the message, only the listening and only the hearing of the message. Only when the message is heard with absolute clarity is the message listened to, heard. People either hear the message or they don’t, no other person can be your listening or hearing. Only you. From the moment pure clarity is heard…there’s no more teacher or student, or message. There’s just you and you alone.

He is both a genius and a creepy loser. Nonduality. Yin-yang.

It is timeless. Its the same message you've been hearing your whole life except its wrapped up in a great, entertaining movie. Just like the word awakening is. Or enlightenment, God realization, nonduality, buddha nature, christ consciousness, gnosis, the list goes on forever. To borrow from The Matrix again here, you can only be shown the door - you're the one that has to walk through it. If you haven't experienced 'Know Thyself' then to you its just a story - a pointer. If you do Know Thyself then you lost any angst over pointers such as God and/or solipsism.

The ancient scriptures are actually deep expressions of the human condition. But they get turned into fomulas for the masses and become mechanical. I find the rantings of some fundamentalist christians similar in its shallowness to nonduality blabber. We aren't improving.

What does any of that have to do with the discussion? I’m talking to a stranger on the internet about deep philosophical questions. I’m not interested in your personal life..your biography or whatever else you think is relevant. I’m interested in the discussion we’re actually having. If you’re busy with the three boy's birthday party then don’t post today . The bolded part is where you seem to completely miss the point: “thoughts and apparent answers “matter. They matter because we are trying to investigate something. If your response to every attempt at investigation is “there is no self..nothing is happening.. bla bla bla” then congratulations ..you’ve successfully turned a potentially interesting philosophical discussion between two human beings into a discussion between a human and a robot. You’re one of the most closed-minded people I’ve encountered in this community. Not because you hold a particular position..but because you seem almost incapable of stepping outside that position to actually examine anything else. Everything gets filtered through the same Jim Newman-style template. Ask a question? “There is no one asking.” Raise a possibility? “There is no one to understand it.” Explore an implication? “Bla bla bla.” Challenge the premise? Repeat the premise even louder. And the funniest part is that you seem genuinely afraid of engaging with these questions in an open-minded way. What exactly are you worried about? If the position is genuinely beyond question..then questioning it should cause absolutely no threat to it. But apparently even entertaining another perspective is dangerous territory for you . I understand the whole neo advaitan uncompromising nonduality position. I really do. The message is essentially that there is no separate self..nothing to attain..nothing to become and ultimately no meaningful message being delivered. Fine. That’s internally coherent on its own terms. And for some people..that radical perspective may be liberating or point toward a profound inner peace. And it is like that for me as well . Pretty interesting stuff . But here’s the part you seem unable or unwillingto grasp ..That doesn’t make it the only legitimate way of investigating reality. Some people are interested in going further into questions about consciousness ..subjectivity..perception.existence..thought experience.. how to integrate modern science with traditional religion and with esoteric spirituality.. because we need the three in our lives not just one . We don’t live on bread alone . We are not just some biological animals who want to eat drink piss shit fuck reproduce shower sleep and die . And yes I’m aware of the standard disclaimer: the message is meaningless..there are no promises,..there is nothing to understandetc. Wonderful. Then let’s stop pretending that endlessly repeating those disclaimers constitutes philosophical investigation. If you genuinely believe the entire thing is beyond concepts and cannot be meaningfully discussed then by all means stop discussing it. But you see you keep logging in into the forum and you keep discussing. if you’re going to participate in a philosophical discussion ..at least participate in the discussion. You don’t have to agree with me. You just have to demonstrate that you’re capable of thinking beyond the boundaries of the conclusion you’ve already decided is correct.Because “bla bla bla no self” isn’t an argument. It’s just autism .

There is reddit which has a non-duality subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/nonduality/ I dislike it personally because it's so big that conversations are anonymous and I find myself arguing the same points with silly people over and over again. Also I got banned accross all my accounts for accidental ban evasion after a subreddit mod banned me on one accounts for disagreeing with them while I've been a user of their site for 16 years since I was 15 years old so they can get fucked it is one of my personal life missions to create a superior competitor product and bankrupt them. What's great about Reddit though is the breath of the topics it covers. You can get laid on Reddit and you see some of the hottest girls in the world posting themselves naked so I have to give them a lot of credit. It also has the highest ressource on red pill content in the internet, it was where it came from and the posts on it are actual high quality. The red pill youtubers just complain about women and blame feminism for all their personal life problems, it's a massive bastardization of the content. Purple pill is a great concept and subreddit to browse through. I had a discussion about it with one of the godfathers of the Red Pill Rollo Tomassi 6 years ago but I think even then I was more advanced than him in his understanding and he was a bit of boomer who didn't believe in what I was talking about

We can talk about it in 200 years, dm me and I'll show you this post. Don't die before then. Perhaps in 50 million years we will be dead but now we are looping back to enlightenment and nonduality that death is ultimately illusory. I fear that you are using spirituality as a cope for personal passivity though. We must be more like Thor and personally lead mankind towards peace and prosperity in my book. Everyone has the power to become an impactful leader. Absolutely my friend, our victory is inevitable and whoever our enemies are should tremble as their fate shall not be death but labelling themselves as enemies of mankind as they become immortal pariahs. I think literally not joking with you guys we will have the technology to bring back Hitler to life and put him in jail, checkmate evil. You can run but you can't hide.

I appreciate your concern, but I can't invalidate my direct experience. This is not depersonalization or escape or anything like that. I feel more vibrant than ever. Mellowmarsh was right, it's not possible to debate this stuff. Each to his own. I know neo advaita or whatever it's called gets a bad rap, and I'm sure there are some people to blame for that. But the kind of radical nonduality that Jim Newman, Tony Parsons and others impart, is definitely the real deal.

Hojo is like the poor man's nonduality enthusiast lol, what he says doesn't really make sense most times. At least to me idk about you guys. If you don't believe in people Hojo then who are you? I don't like to do eye contact too much I feel like it's too intense and we get too close to eachother when we look into eachothers eyes it's like it divolves the barriers between consciousnesses. I like my individuality. With certain women it's intoxicating though.

Most teachings around spirituality are a bit the same. Basically `I AM` resting in that awareness, isness. You are God, that is the teaching, you are awareness itself, not the body, mind or ego. Although this is quite factual, in the sense that you are connected to God and that when you rest in awareness and be in your being state, that you access higher consciousness. That doesn´t mean now you have no human limitations anymore. The problem with the teachings as of now, is that it is an easy bypassing of all human things. Not just making money, what is an obvious one, but what I see in spiritual people I have been around that follow these teachings, is that everything is a sign, everything is connected, everything is one, everything is perfect, SO I don´t have to focus on this or that or sus or so. You don't have to work on that trauma, you don't have to work on your narcissistic or codependent tendencies, you don't have to focus on improving your communication or relationships. You don´t have to focus on making money, cause its ego and your not the ego you are I AM. Yet God is not gonna make money for you, make you survive, that is all up to you as a human self, because even tho you ARE in reality not human, you still HAVE a human body, a human mind, a human ego to protect the mind and body. So the problem I see with the teachings around nonduality is that they create a sweet escape, but that some things in life shouldn´t be escaped, unless you want to escape life altogether and die, but that is not what I think most people want. So as long as you want to live in this body, you will have to acknowledge that you do have a mind, body, ego and that its going nowhere anytime soon. So we can care all the time if I come from ego or not, but that is a pointless game, cause you are coming from ego anyways, even when we think we don´t, the escapism towards nonduality in itself is ego, you think God, consciousness itself would care if you are enlightened or not? No only you care, because you don't want to suffer, you want to escape, you want to not deal with your problems. And if everything is already perfect, one, God, then what is the point of dealing with your problems, you have transcended them and your human life doesn't matter anyway, cause your God. See, that is how nonduality fools you, it makes your ego, human body and human mind things to be transcended instead of to work with. In fact, it will deem it as evil, but if it were truly evil, then we should all kill ourselves now. What I think is more evil is act like you're dead and just living in the "I AM" your now consciousness and then being unaware that you have a body, mind and ego. Then you get some type of God complex where you think no human limitations matter to you, you are above that petty game, you are now high conscious, you can just attract it, manifest what you want, you can just call upon angels or your higher self for anything you need. I AM NOT GONNA DO ANYTHING, the universe provides! Well, even if that La La Land story were true, you would still be stuck in this human vessel, you still have to go to the toilet, go do the dishes, get groceries, eat, sleep, repeat, all that human stuff. You think a God makes grocery lists?? So I think its time for everyone, including me, to get off their high horse, just cause your having the capability to access higher consciousness, doesn't mean you are a walking, living God and that now with your newfound enlightenment you are invincible. You cannot even get to talk with a toothache, a small tiny tooth could trouble you all week and still you believe you are a walking living God? If you get sick, you have to go to the hospital to get help, you couldn't help yourself and you claim to be a God? No, we can access God, connect to God, be one with God, but if you truly wanted to be one with God all the time, in every moment, you should be dead as only a dead men is truly without ego, body and mind.

@Hojo Are you getting into nonduality?

There’s no such thing as nonduality, because nonduality is not a thing. Unmistakably.

I am curious, how have you personally integrated nonduality and God realization ? It seems to me that the God realization people underestimate the importance of a permanent cessation of the separate sense of self. At the same time I sense the nonduality people can also still learn something from the God realization guys, ie perhaps there's some real deep validity to certain peak mystical states etc.

You don't think the actual context (nonduality vs God realization) of most of the original disagreements, was slightly overlooked here ? Seems like the elephant in the room to me.

I'm not saying Leo didn't make any mistakes in the way that he handled disagreements. What I'm saying is that most of the focus here has been placed on just that, ie how disagreements were handled. From what I can tell there wasn't that much focus on the actual context of the disagreements. Which pretty much seems to be: nonduality vs God realization (dating all the way back to the days of Nahm) As a personal example: Recently I really got into radical nonduality, especially the work of Jim Newman. For me it really feels like a big opening of Grace is happening that will take me all the way. Leo told me in no uncertain terms: "It's just not the Full Monty." Now, it might take me all the way, it might not. I'm still open to learning, and I still do learn from Leo. Am I now going to fight Leo on this specific topic. What would be the point ? Just follow ur own resonance at the time. It's kinda simple really. (So much unnecessary drama)

So you saying you and Carl Richard didn't have the same level of integrity as Zurew, ie to sacrifice membership here. I think Elliott might be right, perhaps there was some kind of ego battle he had with Leo. From listening to @Carl-Richard, it sounds like the root of a lot of the disagreements, dating back to the days of Nahm, was mostly about nonduality vs God realization. And even just going through the spirituality section now, you can kind of still spot the two camps. My sense is that some of the God realization guys tend to underestimate radical nonduality. But I'll be the first to admit that there's always more to explore. (Perhaps Nahm and others still had something to learn from Leo, but hey he seemed convinced otherwise, so God bless him where ever he may be. His practical life advice though just seemed way off at times. Not sure if him or his followers had integrated as much as they thought at the time.)

Can you at least acknowledge that he gave bad practical life advice. Also, if you're into radical nonduality, I would converse more with Mellowmarsh, she proper switched on.

So it's like nonduality vs God realization What happened with Nahm's forum, is it still alive ?

Yeah, I wouldn't describe it as being genetically encoded in the brain really, it's more like the entirety of the organism, it's predisposition like you mentioned...... just like a bear, deer, cat or fish. But for some reason in the human mind/brain, this identity gets taken to a whole different extreme. It builds layers on top of layers, concepts on top of concepts, bundles & bundles of self referential thoughts, preferences and memories, beliefs on top of beliefs. It's like the mind becomes an entity in- of-itself and then appears as the forefront of the entire operating system of the human. The more identity food (conditioning) it's given, the bigger and more complex this identity seems to become. And with all these needy preferences and beliefs, comes a lot of psychological suffering.....like a constant state of feeling alone, separate and overwhelmed. This entire operating system of identification is what's referred to as the "ME" or "Ego" it's very heavy and feels dense. Sometimes, although very rare, this entire identification operating system can die/collapse and simultaneously be recognized as having never been real in the first place. When this seems to occur, it's like a ton of bricks dropped off the mind and shoulders of the body/mind organism. It's incredible just how much energy goes into this fictional self construct. One of the big symptoms of this phenomenon is that seeking ends. But nobody comes out enlightened or liberated on the other side. That whole heavy identity is completely shattered, never to return. Not because something really got shattered, because it's clearly recognized as having never been. It also becomes very clear and obvious how this big self illusion becomes formed over a period of time. Basically that entire past process of the self identity being created is clearly and totally seen through. AND THIS IS WHAT REAL ENLIGHTENMENT, SAMADHI, AWAKENING, LIBERATION, NIRVANA, NO SELF, NONDUALITY, ACTUALLY IS. It has nothing at all to do with believing "I am god" or "I am that" or "I am all of reality" ...........those would just be more spirituality conditioned concepts stemming from an illusory identification.........meaning enlightenment definitely hasn't occurred for the body proclaiming such stories. It's unknowing, just like Ralston describes

Dude im talking about consciousness in absolute perspective, You seem confusing 2 different levels of reality. I'm talking about the absolute nature of experience, not how to behave in society,from the absolute perspective, everything appears within the same consciousness, so the distinction between "me" and "chair" its just something you made up from your mind From the relative perspective, there are still body, laws, and social consequences. Realizing nonduality doesn't erase relative reality. It simply means that, at a deeper level, all distinctions arise within the same field of awareness.

That doesn't mean they have any clue what it is. Nonduality has become a watered down buzz word. Most people using this word have no idea how radical true nonduality is.

Nonduality = No one = You = God = Imageless, uncreated, formless. Imagination = ideas and thoughts appearing as the expressive formed contents of Nonduality = Images, imprints, vision = creation, creativity manifold.

Thank you, sorry, I was referring more to the Einstein quote you had there about imagination. I have always been fascinated by imagination itself. I was just wondering how radical nonduality has influenced your sense of imagination or creativity ? (Somehow the phrase "pure imagination" comes to mind.)